Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Paperscorer is a fantastic new mobile (iOS/Android, or Chrome plug-in) app that allows educators and students to assess their learning in real-time. The way this works is a teacher creates an assessment/quiz in Google Forms/Documents and then create and print out a unique answer form/bubble sheet for each student. The student then uses those forms to answer the question and take the assessment/quiz. Once the form is complete the user can then open the app on a mobile device and take pictures of the forms. Paperscorer will then grade the form/assessment and generate detailed reports. Also, Paperscorer will import student responses back to a educator's Google account. This makes it ideal for teachers to differentiate instruction.

SpellingCity w/out a doubt is my favorite site for Spelling and Vocabulary. This is a great site w/ educational portal that allows educators to create word lists that can be incorporated into educational games. These games are not only fun but highly engaging and help students learn their "words". Also, an educator can track students, find an abundance of resources/videos, and even use it for mobile learning w/ a free mobile app (iOS/Android).

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Sketch Nation is a wonderful free app (iOS/Android) and website for creating games. Sketch Nation reminds me of Pixel Press Floors but w/out the paper. All a student has to do is select their category of game (i.e. platform, jumping, etc) then draw their backgrounds/characters/items and let Sketch Nation do the rest. The advanced level editor will help students create more complex games and work on their STEM skills. Sketch Nation even has a nice section for education w/ a collection of games created by students.

More Features...- Custom movement / coding - You can now learn the basics of coding by setting custom movement for enemies. You can specify exactly how enemies move by setting each step of movement, such as “Go left”, “Go right”, “Start over”, etc.. We will add more customization like this in upcoming releases.

- Comments - You can now comment on online games created by other users. See what other users think of your games and give feedback to other game creators. All the comments will be checked by an admin before they are viewable to others.

- News feed - You can now see what users are doing in your games. You’ll see news feed items for new high scores, new comments, when your games have been favorited or featured. You’ll also be able to see when games and comments you have submitted have been approved or rejected.

- Art gallery - You can now re-use art you have previously drawn when creating a new object. Local games will be limited to art stored locally, while online games will be able to access all the art you have created for your online games.

- Pushable blocks - You can now create obstacles that can be pushed by the player. This opens up a whole new way to design levels by requiring the user to push obstacles in order to solve puzzles.

- New ammo settings - You can now create non-moving ammo that appears directly in front of the player. This can be used to let the player wield a weapon such as a sword.

- New dying animations - New dying animations for enemies like “Cut”, “Flatten” and “Fall over”.

NameCoach is a wonderful web service that educators are using to learn student's names and pronounce them correctly. This is especially useful w/ commencement/graduation ceremonies on the horizon. The way this works is simple as a teacher creates a name/web page and then has the student's speak their names. The audio gets embedded into a page and a user can access them all on one page at anytime. Also, NameCoach makes it very easy to share recordings and keep track of student's name/email. It's easy, accurate, and 100% safe for schools to use.

BoomWriter is a excellent site that educators everywhere are using to help teach Writing grades 3rd-8th. The way this works is through an innovative collaborative writing/voting process that motivates students in a fun way. Recently, BoomWriter released a new video to show their writing process in action...

BoomWriter Pro is the version of BoomWriter educators are using to grade and assess students in real-time through standards based rubrics. This lets teachers capture whole class or individual data to make it easy to differentiate instruction and more.

Monday, August 29, 2016

iPracticeMath is a wonderful FREE (Common Core aligned) site for Math grades K-12. I like to think of this as the "ultimate" Math resource, as students/educators can find whatever they are looking for, such as: worksheets/printables, interactive problems, detailed problem-walkthroughs, and more.

Also, iPracticeMath covers a wide variety of Math problems. A user can find Math in all grades/subject areas, from basic Math topics such as addition/subtraction to fractions/decimals/algebra, etc etc. In the "Math Practice" area students can practice their problems and use the built-in scratch pad as a "blank" sheet of paper (i.e. works on mobile devices too!!!).

iPracticeMath offers a wide variety of worksheets/printables that anybody can use. It even lets users print out the answers or view them online. Other nice printables is the quiz generator as well as the "Award" section that lets parents/teachers print out certificates.

Best of all, is the educational portal which allows educators/parents to manage/track student accounts and generate detailed reports. Not only are these reports generated in real-time but they make it easy to assess students and differentiate instruction.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Digipuzzle is a great site for finding a wide range of free online games, activities, and puzzles. This is a great way to introduce Game Based Learning into the classroom as well as for computer "centers". Also, there is a section titled "USA" which is a nice section for finding educational games/activities for on USA history/states/capitals, etc.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Owl Eyes is an innovative site that lets teachers create "classrooms" where their students can read and interact w/ texts. Student's are able to select through a wide variety of literature and then annotate the text. This is helpful as they can take notes and pickup right where they left off when reading. Best of all, the teacher tools allows educators to create quizzes to assess how students are doing and they can even track/manage their student accounts. Educators are using Owl Eyes in a number of different ways such as: differentiating instruction or flipping a classroom.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Channelkit is a new site for curating resources that reminds me of a cross between Pinterest and EduClipper. This is a nice site that turns any type of media (i.e. file, links, images) into digital cards that can then be turned into a channel. These "channels" can then be made public/private and shared w/ others via unique URL.

EDpuzzle the excellent free tool that educators everywhere are using to flip their classroom or lesson, just released their "School Channel". This channel allows teachers to share/
copy other video lessons from their colleagues. Right now, EDpuzzle is offering 5 copies to educators so they can try it out.

Monday, August 22, 2016

GrammarFlip is an excellent site for students looking to practice and work on their Grammar. The way this works is that a student watches a educational video on grammar (i.e. parts of a sentence, punctuation, etc) and then completes interactive exercises. Not only is this ideal for self paced learning, but this can help educators differentiate instruction as well as "flip" a classroom/lesson. Best of all are the detailed reports that gives real-time assessment for teachers.

WriteReader is an excellent learning tool for grades K-4 to help students w/ their Reading and Writing. This is done through a educational portal where educators can create an account and then share a unique code for students. Also, this portal allows for teachers to manage/monitor student accounts and track progress. Best of all, there are lots of resources for educators such as: tutorials, lesson plans aligned to Common Core Standards, and more.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Help Teaching is an excellent site for educators, parents, and others looking for educational resources such as quiz/test creators, online assessments, or worksheets/printables. These printables are for K-12 and cover a wide range of subjects. Also, there is a test/virtual room where students can take online assessment and get results in real time.

I highly recommend checking out Help Teaching by clicking here!!!
For my Printerest Board on Educational Resources click here.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Sangha is a new (free) iOS app communications/calendar app for schools. This is a great app that gives teachers/parents the same calendar across any platform. This way educators can schedule anything they want (i.e. parent conferences), classroom reminders, etc. and then parents can sign up via a e-signature form. Also, teachers can send messages w/ attachments as well as private message others and organizations.

Diffission EDU is a excellent new (free) iOS game for students to practice their Fraction skills. Diffission EDU is a fun game aligned to Common Core Standards that has players slicing through shapes to form fractions. Best of all is the teacher dashboard for tracking student progress as well as a "Challenge" mode to help modify a student's learning.

More info...

Partition shapes into parts w/ equal areas. Express the area of each part as a unit fraction of the whole.

Explain equivalence of fractions in special cases, and compare fractions by reasoning about their size.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Clockwork Brain is a free brain training iOS app. This is a super-fun game that has a steampunk feel to it as users play through 17 brain training activities. These games focus on different skills such as: memory, attention, dexterity, reasoning, and more. Also, a player will collect
power ups to unlock special features. Best of all, is the detailed reporting that shows graphs of the different areas of how a person is doing.

Tower Math is an excellent app for learning basic Math skills. Tower Math uses the ultra-popular "tower defense-game" format to create a fun learning environment for kids. Teachers can use this to integrate Game Based Learning into a classroom while students learn basic Math skills such as: addition, multiplication, subtraction, etc.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Answer Garden is an excellent new tool for a person's website. AG is a gadget that can be embedded into a site (similar to a poll) that people can use to answer question that you create. These answers then get displayed in a visual brainstorming/tag cloud view w/ the top choices standing out as more bold and bigger font (think Wordle).

Answer Garden can be used by teachers to get feedback from students, bloggers for self analysis, etc etc.

Quick Rubric is the wonderful new site for creating rubrics from the creators of Storyboard That. This is far and away the easiest site I've seen for creating a beautiful rubric where a user can add a row or a column w/ a tap of an arrow button. Everything inside of the rubric is customizable (i.e. from the heading to customizing points) and a user can save/print out as many rubrics as they need.

Decimalus Rex is a new online game from RoomRecess for learning Decimals. This is a fun platform style game that has students running and jumping while breathing fire and burning away signs w/ the correct answers. Some of the skills learned are: reading decimals, ordering decimals, adding decimals, and place value. Once a user completes a board they are then able to update their abilities.

Storyboard That the wonderful site that educators are using for a variety of purposes such as: digital storytelling, project based learning, as a graphic organizer, timeline creator, and more, has been hard at work creating "top" new features for the summer as well as some great ideas for Back to School.

Storyboard That had some pretty big updates come out this summer to make using Storyboard That even easier for teachers to use. There is a new teacher dashboard which has an even more polished look w/ a "featured" activity section as well as links to tons of teacher guides/lesson plans. Also, there are excellent reporting features which makes assessing students and tracking student data that much easier.

Storyboard That Smart Scenes are scenes that can be customized in one way or another, similar to how we can customize characters. So far, we have 60+ Smart Scenes! These scenes will have a blue ‘Edit Scene’ button (in the same place that a character’s ‘Edit Pose’ button is) that allows the user to edit things such as time of day (daytime to nighttime), weather (raining, snowing, sunny), and more!The Storyboard That Save History feature allows users to pull up previously saved versions of their storyboards in case they want to go back and fix something, or just in case they want to see a previous version! You can find this feature by clicking the ‘View Save History’ button below a storyboard that you have edited and saved at least once before. Finally, Storyboard That has updated their character animations to allow for more customized movement as well as a 15 x 9 layout template. They even created a bunch of lesson plans for Back to School. These detailed plans help teachers start out the year and integrate technology into the classroom. For more info on how to use Storyboard That for starting off the school year click here.I highly recommend checking out Storyboard That by clicking here!!!*Storyboard That is an advertiser of Technology Tidbits.

Monday, August 15, 2016

BoomWriter is a terrific site that I’ve written about many times because it lets elementary, middle, and high school teachers conduct non-fiction, fiction, and vocabulary development group-writing activities in almost any subject area.

Now they’ve added BoomWriter PRO, which is a paid version of their product, and any teacher whose work with students involves writing should definitely consider this upgrade (only $2.99 a month) for the following reasons:

Standards-based Rubrics! Boomwriter has made Argument/Opinion, Information/Explanatory, and Personal Narrative rubrics that will resonate with and prove useful to any teacher regardless of the state or region they may teach in.

Makes Grading Easy!! BoomWriter has done a very clever job of overlaying the rubrics and grading feature atop the individual student’s submission. This allows the teacher to look at the work and the performance descriptor simultaneously before then applying the grade/score with a single click.

Capture Student Writing Data!!! If the first two reasons were not convincing enough, this one should seal the deal. Are you frustrated by having to wait until the following school year when the standardized testing results arrive to learn how your students’ writing is progressed? Not particularly helpful, is it? BoomWriter PRO lets teachers capture whole class and individual student writing data in real time before then presenting it to the teacher in a highly visual and easy to interpret manner. This allows you to identify any potential writing instruction ‘blindspots’ that you may need to address with your class, as well as the ability to consistently assess and monitor the progress of each individual student in your class in all areas of writing throughout the entire school year.

BoomWriter is a free site that keeps finding new and better ways to support teachers through technology. If you join, be sure to opt for the PRO upgrade.I highly recommend checking out BoomWriter Pro by clicking here!!!*BoomWriter is an advertiser of Technology Tidbits.

Neo K12 ia an excellent site for finding educational videos/games. What I really like about NK is how easy it is to use and the vast amount of different resources they cover. I like to think of it as a cross between Nettrekker and United Streaming.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Storynory is a nice little site similar to Book Wink, where a student clicks on a story and then listens to it. What makes Storynory so great is the ability to download these audio tracks to your computer.

There is a lot here to like so I recommend checking Storynory out by clicking here.

LearnCloud is a new (beta) site from Rumie that reminds me a bit of a cross between Nettrekker and Edshelf. Think of it as a social search engine where users can curate educational content from the web and then share it w/ others. Also, users can comment on existing content as well as check the readability level of each item.

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Quiz Hero is one of my favorite new free mobile (iOS/Android) apps for Game Based Learning. This amazing app uses an RPG style (i.e Bards Tale anyone ;-) to help students learn a wide variety of subjects, such as Math, Vocabulary, Science, etc. The game follows a familiar RPG formula where users select a class (i.e. mage, warrior, archer) and then begin a fun filled educational quest. There is a ton of interaction w/ other characters, an easy walkthrough for beginners, the ability to buy/sell/craft items, and much much more. As users level up they unlock more features, problems get harder, and more of the quest and areas are revealed.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Jump! is the new educational Math game by Artgig Studio (Mystery Math Town) for adding and counting numbers. The way this work is a player jumps across platforms of numbers going in whatever sequential order the level provides (i.e. one, four, twelve, etc) while rescuing Snortles and squishing numbers to get to the other side.

Here is more info...

Practice skip counting and mental math as you squish numbers together

Apply multiplication knowledge to figure out the next number

Game difficulty adapts to your own skills, so you will be challenged, but not overwhelmed

Hints are always available, because sometimes the obvious just isn’t obvious

Make your path in any direction you like - where it leads is up to you

Every game screen is dynamically generated, so you never play the same game twice

Earn bonus beach balls to play with at the beach party!

6 environments to cross, 141 Snortles to rescue, so many numbers to squish

Play and replay levels to rescue all the Snortles

Option to turn off Stompers and fuses for a more relaxing math journey

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Animatron the amazing new and free site for creating custom animations has just released their "political" set. This set which contains all of the candidates running for office and other political figures is a great way to study/introduce Politics, the election process, US History, and more. Educators are using Animatron for digital storytelling, project based learning, and more. Also, Animatron is an excellent collaborative tool as multiple users can work on the same project in real-time.

For more info on how to make a Political Cartoon/animation click here.
Click here for Animatron's political set.

Hop Star is one of my favorite brand new iOS games for learning basic Math skills. Hop Star reminds me of the popular arcade/mobile game Crossy Roads (think a pixelated Frogger) designed for students grade 1st-5th. This super fun game has students hopping over a wide variety of items/animals (i.e. trucks, elephants, etc) while collecting coins. These coins can be used to unlock new characters and power-ups. Also, a student answers a variety of Math questions to earn coins to help them get father along in the game.

Best of all, Hop Star tracks student data and generates detailed reports and is aligned to Common Core standards. This is ideal for differentiating instruction and self paced learning. The problems covered in Hop Star cover a wide range of basic Math skills such as: addition/subtraction, fractions, decimals, etc.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

emaze is a new (beta) site for creating stunning presentations. This appears to be a cross between Prezi and PP as it allows users to interact w/ presentation and move around. As w/ most sites a user can add: text, images, audi, links, etc into their presentation. Best of all a finished presentation can then be embedded into a site/blog.

I highly recommend checking out emaze for educators by clicking here!!!

Visme is a wonderful new (beta) site for creating beautiful looking interactive presentations, animations, infographics and more. This is a simple to use drag-n-drop site that educators can use in a wide variety of ways (i.e. announcements, project based learning, etc.). Best of all, a user has complete control over their content and has a wide range of controls from privacy setting, sharing (embedding), and more.

Edventure Builder is an innovative new site that is perfect for sparking student's creativity by providing a online platform for creating: scavenger hunts, interactive stories, or choose your own adventures. Also, this is a fantastic tool that educators can use to build mobile lessons, interactive tours (think Back to School night or outside activities), and more.

The way this works is quite simple, from a browser a user can create an adventure (i.e., lesson, hunt, tour, etc) by adding text, images, video, and links. Then by clicking a button it gets published to any browser based mobile device. Best of all, are the different features that allows a user to fully customize their adventures and edit, save, and publish them easily.

Buncee the amazing learning tool that educators and students are using worldwide to create stunning
presentations, digital stories, eCards, announcements, and more, has just integrated w/ Google Classroom. This now means that Google Classroom users now have access to the advanced features of Buncee for Schools and Districts.

Buncee is such an excellent tool for schools as educators can access and monitor student accounts, assess students and track their learning to help w/ differentiating instruction, and much much more.

I highly recommend checking out Buncee for Schools by clicking here!!!

Monday, August 1, 2016

Trilo Spelling is a wonderful new (iOS/Google Play) for grades K-2. This is a fun phonics-based spelling game that has students trying to spell words w/ a variety of monster characters as well as working on their Reading skills.

Trilo Spelling other highlights:

The phonics sequence includes short vowels, consonant digraphs, FLoSS rule, and beginning and ending consonant blends.

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David Kapuler

I have been working w/ technology and education for over 14 years in a school setting. I'm looking for work in a K-12 environment as a Technology Integration/Support Specialist in WI/IL. Contact email - dkapuler@gmail.com
I'm currently looking to get my Mac OS/Repair Certification, as well as a Masters in Technology Integration.
Also, I have a solid background in web design, w/ network/server support.
On a personal note, I';m a proud father of 3 boys and 1 girl, and have been married for 10 years.